Jim Carroll​

Jim Carroll : Profile

Jim Carroll is an author, columnist, media commentator, and consultant, with a focus on linking future trends to innovation and creativity. He has a 20 year track record in providing direct, independent guidance to a huge, diverse global client base, combined with a previous professional financial background, including 12 years with the world’s largest professional services firm. Jim provides high energy keynotes for audiences of 5,000, or intimate, detailed customized strategic planning sessions for CEO / board / senior management meetings. He has researched key innovation success factors for dozens of associations, professions, companies, individuals, and industries including life sciences, health care, insurance, automotive, manufacturing, agriculture, technology, education, government, consumer products, retail, banking and countless others.

Who has booked Jim Carroll for his insight on future trends, innovation, & creativity? NASA. Disney. The PGA of America. Johnson & Johnson. The Swiss Innovation Forum. Simply put, Jim helps to transform growth-oriented organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes. He’s widely acknowledged as as one of the world’s leading global futurists, trends and innovation experts.

He is recognized worldwide as a “thought leader” and authority on: global trends; rapid business model change; business transformation in a period of economic uncertainty; and the necessity for fast paced innovation.He has a track record of inspiring organizations to reframe the opportunity for innovation in the context of significant, transformative change. When the Walt Disney Corporation needed to inspire senior staff on the topics of innovation and creativity, they brought in Jim. The US National Recreation and Parks Association had Jim open a conference for 4,000 recreation professionals to inspire them to reframe the context of recreation in the 21st century. The Swiss Innovation Forum featured Jim as their closing keynote speaker, delivering a message of the hope and opportunity that can come from being relentlessly focused on innovation.Even NASA has had Jim in to address a group that included several astronauts, directors of launch operations, flight engineers and program managers, on the concept of “transformational leadership.”Jim’s global client base is extensive. It includes organizations such as: the National Australian Bank • Diners Club • HJ Heinz • PPG • the Minnesota HealthCare Association CEO Summit • Toshiba Australia • Blue Cross Blue Shield • Northrop Grumman • Johnson & Johnson • Signature Travel • Microsoft • Ernst & Young • Burger King • Rockwell Collins • Oracle • US Navy, Marine, Air Force Child Youth Programs • Nestle • the Swiss Innovation Forum • Readers Digest Food & Entertainment Group • Motorola • KPMG • World Congress on Healthcare Innovation & Technology • Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut) • Towers Perrin • British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) • Swiss Innovation Forum • World Congress on Quality • SAP Sweden • American Community Bankers • Providence Health Plans • Fidelity Bank (Cayman) Ltd • Verizon •American Express • Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to name but a few. Hundreds of thousands have shared his insight with highly energized presentations in Zurich, New York, Vancouver, Cayman Islands, Palm Springs, Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Budapest, Miami, Toronto, Costa Rica, San Francisco, Nassau and Stockholm.

His insight has been recently covered in the UK Telegraph, Dubai’s Capital Magazine and South Africa’s The Star newspaper. BusinessWeek named Jim as one of four leading sources for insight on innovation and creativity; he was a feature expert on the prime time CNBC series, The Business of Innovation, hosted by Maria Bartiromo. Credit Suisse profiled Jim in their global customer publication Bulletin, noting that he provides “unique insight on growth.”

Jim is also an author, with books including The Future Belongs To Those Who Are Fast, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast, and What I Learned From Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation. He has participated in over 3,000 interviews on radio, television and in print, including media exposure and interviews with ABC News, BusinessWeek, INC, Fast Company, CNBC, Texas Meetings and Events, The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), STOrai Magazine (Retail Association of America), The Age (Sydney, Australia), American Way, CAPITAL magazine (Dubai/United Arab Emirates) CEO Magazine Hungary, Association LEADERSHIP, The National Post and PROFIT, to name but a few.

Jim is a graduate of the University of Toronto – Rotman Business School Directors Education Program, as his career path increasingly comes to include strategic guidance at the corporate Board level.International Futurist, Trends, and Innovation Expert, Jim Carroll lives five years in the future. As a leading global futurist, he dedicates his time to helping people and organizations understand how they can aggressively adopt tomorrow, today. Jim Carroll wakes people up to the trends that will affect them, and challenges them to cope with a world that continues to witness constant, relentless, dramatic change.

Jim Carroll was recently named as one of "four leading sources for insight on innovation and creativity" by Business Week. Jim Carroll's observations on linking trends and creativity are frequently covered in Fortune magazine's "Business Innovation Insider" Blog.

It's no wonder that such global publications are embracing Jim Carroll's key message: rapid times require bold change and new levels of creativity and innovation within every organization... and Jim Carroll is known for affecting compelling change with lasting results. That's why Jim Carroll's recent clients include global organizations such as Disney, DaimlerChrysler, Caterpillar, Nestle, Motorola, Towers Perrin, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Waters Corporate, the Swiss Innovation Forum, Verizon, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, SAP, and the American Nursery and Landscape Association.

Jim Carroll has well over ten years of experience in studying what makes companies relentlessly creative, and how they ride critical trends in order to achieve success. What's Jim Carroll talking about? Global economic trends; hyper-innovation; rapid time to market; the latest consumer trends; collapse of product life cycles and high-velocity marketing; the skills crisis, managing Gen-connect and the new workplace; creating high performance, change oriented teams.

You name it – global thought leader Jim Carroll is talking about it.

Jim Carroll is recognized for his critical thinking and business-oriented view of issues relating to social, consumer, and workplace trends; demographic and lifestyle issues; emerging technologies; as well as economic and business trends. His programs are delivered with his signature humor, high-level energy, deep insight, and challenging observations, and are based on extensive research and customization.

​POTENTIAL SPEAKING TOPICS

Jim Carroll speaks to a huge range of topics related to trends and innovation. Below are just a few of the topic descriptions that have been used for some of Jim’s most recent keynotes. Remember – every presentation/topic is highly customized to your particular needs.

Potential topic descriptionsBelow are just a few of the topic descriptions that have been used for some of Jim’s most recent keynotes. Remember – every presentation/topic is highly customized to your particular needs. Scroll through the page for more information on the potential topic.

What Do World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do?

Jim Carroll has been the featured trends & innovation speaker at a wide variety of corporate leadership meetings for Fortune 1000 organizations. These meetings, often sponsored by the CEO or other senior members of management, have been focused on successful, forward oriented innovation strategies.

Through his participation, has seen first hand what these organizations are doing to position themselves for post-recession opportunity. One thing they are certainly doing is finding innovative solutions to complex problems. In this motivational keynote, Jim outlines what he’s seen global innovation leaders concentrating on to ensure market success.

World class innovators possess a relentless focus on growth; continually transition their revenue source; and solve customers problems – before the customer knows it’s a problem. They focus on upside down innovation by sourcing innovation ideas through their customers. They concentrate on ingesting fast ideas; check their speed and focus on corporate agility; and focus on long term wins through constant incremental improvements. They know that skills partnerships are a key success factor.

And most important: world class innovators aren’t afraid to back away from big ideas: they know that right now it’s a great time to made bold decisions, and take decisive advantage to forge aggressive new paths against their competitors.

While everyone else wallows in aggressive indecision and organizational sclerosis, world class innovators know that it is a great time to do great things!

How do we seize transformative opportunities?

Aligning Acceleration and Agility: The Business Case for Fast!

To say that we live in a fast world would be an understatement. Small, quick upstarts like Square are challenging the global credit card industry, at the same that GPS based driver monitoring devices are rewriting the rules of the auto insurance industry. The NEST Learning Thermostat morphs from a quiet startup to a worthy challenger to industrial energy device powerhouses. Autonomous vehicle technology leads us to road trains and a more rapid emergence of intelligent highway infrastructure. We’re in the era of the end of incumbency, in which small dominates big, fast trumps ponderous, and indecision spawns failure. Everywhere we look, we can see acceleration, speed, and velocity: and in times like these, time isn’t a luxury.

For any software professional, these trends matter — because we are at the dawn of a time in which “software is poised to take over the world.” That’s not an understatement – it’s a reality. And with that trend, the role of Agile is shifting, from a means of bringing reproducibility, consistency and sanity to the software development process — to a foundation for “what comes next.” It’s clear that the values and practices behind Agile, such as the focus on testing, tight feedback cycles and accelerated learning, continuous or frequent releases, responding to fast change, serve as the backbone of what you need to be a fast organization. Today, companies like Google can succeed because of their ability to get new functionality out to end users quickly, in order to test the market, or to respond to accelerating trends.

Agile is a great facilitator to help you be fast. Join us as Jim Carroll takes us on a voyage into how the new rules of business and technology are providing for a reality in which the spirit of agility isn’t just an option – it’s the new normal.

Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Aligning Yourself for Growth Through Innovation

In the face of widespread economic volatility, organizations have three essential choices: they can panic, making rash decisions on structure, markets, investments; they can freeze and do nothing; or they can respond to rapid change through innovation, particularly with respect to strategies, structure, capabilities, markets, products, and activities.

Jim Carroll, one of the world’s leading futurist, trends & innovation expert, shares his insight on the strategies that leading edge organizations are pursuing to stay ahead of the economy.

It’s timely and critical insight! Many CEO’s and senior executives understand that in addition to managing existing challenges, now is the time to focus on trends and the future, and that they need to act quickly to establish an innovative mindset to get there intact. Jim provides his unique insight on staying ahead in volatile times, through his signature keynote addresses, after-dinner talks, discussions at small intimate management/Board meetings, or by speaking and participating in large scale senior management and leadership meetings.

7 Things You Need to Do Right Now: Aligning The Fast Future to Your Current Strategy

While volatility rocks global markets, there continue to be fundamental truths: your industry, products, competition, skills requirements, organizational capabilities, and ability to respond to rapid change will define your future success. Innovative organizations succeed by mastering the pace of the new high velocity economy.

Product innovations occur today at such a pace that “time to market” is now measured in weeks rather than years. A furious pace of technological innovation continues unabated, with the rapid emergence of new technologies that change entire industries. Customer mindset has become increasingly difficult to capture as we become a society with massive attention deficits. Business models are subject to upheaval due to economic turmoil, commercialization of product, and the rapid emergence of new competitors.

It’s a fast paced world — and that’s why leading edge organizations are focused on key leadership strategies that provide for a fast paced future. In this inspirational keynote, Jim Carroll will challenge you to confront the “big trends” that you need to face head on and what you should be doing RIGHT NOW.

Where’s the Growth? Transformative Opportunities for Transformative Times

Where will we be in 2015? 2020 or 2025? What challenges and opportunities will we face? In a world of massive globalization, what will our markets, customers, industries and organizational structures look like?

These are truly transformative times, with an alignment of political leaders, business executives, consumers, researchers and industry groups all realizing that now is the time that we need to solve complex problems with bold thinking and “big ideas.” Some of the biggest organizations in the world – including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Toshiba, the Swiss Innovation Forum, the BBC, Motorola and Nestle – have sought just such insight from Jim Carroll. As someone who has assisted hundreds of organizations in thinking about and preparing for the future, Jim Carroll has become globally recognized as one of the world’s leading international futurists.

In a highly customized presentation, he outlines the major trends that will impact you, and what you need to start doing now in order to respond. He will open your mind up to the opportunities of this transformative time – a new era when big ideas and bold action are proving to be the foundation for significant transformation in how we approach global challenges, problems and opportunities. In doing so, he will ensure you are well positioned for the future!

“I have been working with Jim for the past four years, and, without question, he is one of the most dynamic speakers and professional partners I’ve ever come across. Our audiences (internal and external) love him, and he works wonderfully with our customers. ….I’m willing to bet your first experience will lead to many, many more, as it has with SAP. I wish you the best with him….book him before someone else does!”- SAP​

“…our intention was to wake up the conference attendees and to give them a glimpse of the future, and you succeeded on both counts. Your energy and enthusiasm were contagious, and your insights were informative.” Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals​

“One of Jim’s strengths as a speaker is the preparation he does in advance of the event, to customize his message so that it truly resonates with a particular audience. Our members started the day with Jim …and were still talking about what they heard at the reception late into the night. 300 grey haired folks waking up to change and innovation… great job! ( this is quoted from our evaluation form ) Jim took the time to study our organization in advance of the conference, and our members appreciated that his message reflected the reality of the changes in their profession.” Appraisal Institute of Canada

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